We are looking at bringing back custom tea subscriptions. Thoughts?

Custom Tea Subscriptions May Be Back!

At Simple Loose Leaf, our great white whale is attempting to figure out a way to offer the tea community a tea subscription they can customize. We offered an attempt at it in the past but for behind the scenes reasons it couldn’t grow past the few die hard members we had.

Now we think we have come up with a way to offer a great customize-able tea subscription that allows a customer to select the types of teas they want to experience while also being manageable for us. Note: This idea would be offered in addition to our current Tea Box subscription.

So a quick break down of how things would work:

1. We would offer a Tea Club for each of the different types of tea we feature.
i.e. Green Tea Club, Black Tea Club, Herbal Tea Club, Caffeine Free Tea Club, etc.

2. Each Tea Club would be a flat rate price each month. We are looking at about $3 per club.

3. We would offer flat rate shipping at $3 for US customers.
3.a. Regardless of the number of clubs a person is a member of, the shipping stays the same.

4. Now the fun part! You can join as many of the different clubs as you want thus building your perfect tea subscription.
i.e. If you love Green Teas and Herbal Teas then you can join only those clubs and not have to pay for the Tea Box we offer now where you would get teas that may not interest you.
Example: You join the Green Tea Club and the Caffeine Free Tea Clubs. At $3 per club and $3 for shipping your monthly membership would cost $9. If you find that you are not drinking the Green Teas as fast, then you can go down to just the Caffeine Free Tea club and your membership would go down to $6/month. And so on.

5. Lastly, we bundle all of your clubs together into a single “Club Box” and ship it out on the 1st of each month.

Now for the part that we need to get your help with, would you want to be a member of our “Club Box”? (That is just a working title)

Below, if you would, tell us what you think best describes your thoughts.
“Love It” | “It’s Okay” | “Bad Idea”
And why you think what you do.

Also I will attempt to answer any questions you have throughout the day.

PS. Some of you may have gotten an email about this already but feel free to chime in with your thoughts here as well.

Cheers,
Andrew

6 Replies

Love it.

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LOVE it!

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The potential logistics of this kind of operation blow my mind. It sound like it could be great if you can manage it, but more info would be great.

For instance – how many samples/teas would you get per ‘box’ and how much variety would that be? How can you keep samples from repeating if say your customer has been with the subscription N number of months, getting X number of samples per month and your shop only carries Y number of distinct teas, considering that certain teas might even be in more than one category (Herbal and caffeine free are bound to overlap at a certain point, for example).

Not that it’s not a wonderful concept, it just sounds complicated. Good luck!

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Love it!

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Hi Flyawaybirdie,

The logistics of this subscription would have some intricacy but to a very large degree it is only one step more complicated than what we are currently doing with our current subscription.

At the same time we will not be able to offer this subscription format if we do not have a certain critical mass.

With regards to your second point. We have a running list of what teas have been featured, when they were featured, and what category a given tea was featured in. Each of our members, with this subscription format, will get to select the category of teas but not the specific teas that go into that category. Each category will have defined rules by which we select teas to be featured, and we will share those rules/guildlines with customers so they know what to expect.

i.e. Green tea and black tea clubs are going to be traditional teas like Earl Grays, lightly “flavored” teas like Jasmine Sencha Saga, or purely unflavored teas like Gunpowder Green Tea or a straight Assam.

We have tried to offer a subscription that was completely custom from start to finish. We sent out a menu of teas each month that each member got to build their subscription each month. We had to change away from that format as it was FAR beyond complicated and the number of errors we had each month were beyond terrible. The new format gives customers enough customization that they will be able to get the types of teas they are most likely to like while at the same time allowing us plan out what teas will be featured a few months out.

I hope that helps to shine light on how things will work.

Cheers,
Andrew

I’d be more apt to a subscription with specific tea types. I was finding too many teas that I didn’t like (picky palette) with the general subscription.

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